It's another example of words being taken over and misrepresented to mean something they don't.

Socialism means the workers control the means of production (more Venezuela-ish than Nordic model) not just Big-State-steal-from-everyone-to-give-to-those-less-fortunate-than-yourself-you-bigot!

What people are actually pushing for today is more big government running charity vice private non-profit operations. Who do you think is more efficient?

As a resident expert (self-appointed, of course) with a first-hand view in how the government spends money... YOUR money, let's just say that 'wanting government primacy in any entity whose mission is to increase the public good' is shortsighted.

For example...

We just started a Space Force with no credible space threat. For the record, we’re already $20+ trillion in debt. Why is there no Tea Party, ahem, fiscally responsible voices on either side? Write THAT article and I’d read it.

Think this father in the image below could care less about the Trump Soap Opera that CNN and MSNBC uses to feed 90% of their coverage? You're probably right. He probably doesn't. He's a man trying to live some semblance of life. It's probably a challenge.
​

What would the United States (and the world) look like had we invested that money in, you know, humanity?
​

But instead, we are 20+ TRILLION in debt. With what to show for it?

​This nation was founded by a class of people who saw a long train of rights abuses. They sought refuge from a government that had a blatant disregard of their rights, their privacy and their tax dollars.

Typically, when you talk about politics on Facebook, your chances of getting cancer go up exponentially. It counter intuitive, actually. You'd think people would not go out of their way to publicly prove their political ignorance in such a public forum. But you'd be wrong.

I expected the common political drivel involving the use of force to punish your political enemies. Jail the Democrats, Jail the Republicans, etc.

Instead they hit a vein that goes beyond Left-Right Politics. People want smaller government and government that is effective and not wasteful.

For example:

"Shut down 80% of the federal departments. Set up GoFundMe pages and allow people to give their dollars to programs they value, voluntarily."

"Stop taxing us for more services than defense. The federal government's only job is to protect us from threats. Not buy up land, regulate business, hand out entitlements, etc. That is the state's job. Enact term limits and prosecute politicians when they commit felonies, espionage, etc. "

"Pare back to just the essential duties outlined in the constitution, leave the rest to the states, and you'll reduce it by 75%."

"Actually this is an idea stated in jest by Ben Shapiro, but I think it might work - bring our representatives and senators back home to their districts/states to actually live with their families/constituents and face the consequences of their decisions with those they are supposed to be representing. They can vote with an app. They do everything else with one. That would end hired lobbying, make the legislative branch, at least, truly accountable, and clean out the swamp big time"

"Fire half the federal employees, do away with the Department of Education, the Energy Department, The Airport screeners. If you're working for the Federal Government and you're classified as non-essential you shouldn't be there!!!"

"Pass a constitutional amendment that specifically says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”.

Oh wait never mind it’s already in the bill of rights. So let’s just follow the constitution then."

"Get rid of 75% of the agencies, Dept of Education, BLM, EPA, etc. Cut back IRS and tax laws and make it an agency that provides tax advice and helps people know how to pay taxes, House and Senate have six months each year to get the job done (no lifetime salaries and benefits)...then they have to go home and are subject to the same laws and benefits all citizens have to live by. Supreme Court Justices must retire at the age of 75 or sooner if they fall asleep during hearings."

"No more increases in military budget until the Pentagon can fully account for the trillions of dollars it has "lost". Congressional pay should be reduced to the average income of the state that each Representative and Senator represents. Drop all health care coverage for Senators and Representatives. Shutter ICE. End corporate welfare, using the savings to ensure solvency for both Social Security and Medicare. Oh, make it illegal for Senators and Representatives to work for lobbyists and enact term limits for Senators and Representatives (3 terms in Senate, 6 terms in the House)."

"Stop the congressional lifetime pay check and benefits. (Congressional welfare...)They have all become millionaires....they don't need the lifetime pay check. Give some of that money to our disabled veterans."

"The government has specific powers and duties under the constitution. Bring it back to the original purpose to serve the people. It was this way in its writing to prevent exactly what it has come to now, a cash cow of corruption to those in DC"

"1. Congress passes a law making it illegal for federal employees to collectively bargain or lobby. Bureaucracies use political power to grow themselves. 2. Get rid of the federal retirement system and replace it with 401K or some other portable pension. High wages and early pensions draw slackers and keep non-performers and mediocre performers on the job. 3. Immediately cut 15% of federal positions. Agency directors and supervisors have no financial incentive to reduce payroll. Conversely, an easy way to currently justify a promotion in the federal system is to add subordinates, not to produce results. Forced to do the job with fewer employees, supervisors would be forced to get rid of the dead wood. 4, Substantial cash incentives paid to federal employees who discover ways to improve efficiency. 5. Congress passes balanced budget and creates law requiring all future budgets to balance. 6. Abolish Department of Education and return education management to states."

"Eliminate all government pensions, move half of our military bases off foreign soil, make food stamps (EBT) only used for basic foods (ground meat, oatmeal, etc), simplify law (as opposed to exponentiation) and enforce diligently such as "run from the police in a motor vehicle: 5 years minimum in jail, privatize what is failing (ie schools, prisons), and legalize anything involving consent (drugs, prostitution, etc)."

I worked closely with really good local national Afghans who risked their lives in Afghanistan for 5-8 years waiting on approval to get a special Visa to come to America.

They embedded with infantry units to help translate for US & Coalition forces. Day in and day out they were in combat and despised by their fellow Afghans. They were targeted, many lost their lives, their families were kidnapped and beheaded and placed in public squares to send a message and yet they still pressed on helping us in the hope of a better life. Many are still waiting today to come here. Mind you this is after years of waiting and waiting and risking their lives daily. So who deserves to come here for a better life? Is it the person who directly benefited the US and put their lives on the line for us, or the person who breaks the law b/c they want what America can provide. What is more fair, since we cannot take in the entire world?

Is it more fair for people to just cross an open field, hide in a shipping container, hide under a boat, then melt into a city, fly under the radar, get benefits that our tax money goes to, then expect amnesty from Congress or is it more fair to reward those who directly contributed to our country before ever getting here?

What about all the women and children that are raped at the hands of coyotes and human traffickers at multiple points along their journey because our immigration laws have historically been weak and they think they can just come here and get right in. Traffickers take advantage of that and abuse the people who often pay their entire life savings to enter our country illegally.

Is that cool, why isn't the MSM speaking out against that?

Perhaps these scumbags wouldn't be in business if they knew it would lead to nowhere if they couldn't get across the border.

There's more to the issue than just "So and so wants a better life so it's a travesty that we don't give it to them". There are Billions of people all around the world who want to come here. The bottom line is we provide immigration to people, legally, that have skills we need. This is common for all developed countries in the world. It has to benefit us as a nation, not crooked politicians who want voters dependent on the government, which is why they push mass illegal immigration.

Go check out Ellis Island and look at the immigration history and the requirements people had to go through to get here. It wasn't just a free for all like the lying MSM tries to make it out to be.

Most logical Americans are fine with people coming into our country legally. We welcome them and uphold them when they strive to make a better life for themselves, as long as they Integrate, Embrace American Values, Embrace Freedom, Embrace Hard Work, Embrace our Language and Embrace our History.

But when you break the law and cut ahead of others and then demand rights, then you get rejected by most Americans.

I simply see this as the truth. I welcome all immigrants who enter legally and want to embrace America.

I work with tons of legal immigrants that are now Americans and most of them love our country more than average Americans do. They have built a phenomenal life for themselves and those around them and understand what our country is about when you follow the law. Matter of fact I don't doubt for a minute that a large majority of the illegal immigrants simply want to make a better life for themselves.

I also know many of their children and of course they have a different view. I sympathize with their parents as I sympathize with all of the other people I have met around the world who live in poverty and want to come here.

But at the end of the day everyone has to understand we have laws that have to be followed which includes an order of merit for immigrants. We simply cannot intake millions of illegal immigrants and sustain an economy.

-Guest Post

-Editor’s Note: Instead or politicizing, which most will do, why not demand accountability from our representation? If the policy is failing, change the policy. Unfortunately, there is no political will to do so.

Connecticut just became the tenth blue state to pledge to cast its electoral votes for whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationally.

Why?

Because according to the measure's proponents, the electoral college -- along with everything else that's more than 10 minutes old -- is backward and stupid.

Here's one more step toward making the United States into a giant, undifferentiated blob, as opposed to the collection of distinct societies it was originally intended to be. The Constitution refers to the United States in the plural every time, and the way the Constitution and the Union were originally understood, the "popular vote" was an irrelevancy.

During the World Series, for example, we don’t add up the total number of runs scored by each team over the course of the series, and decide who won on that basis. We count up how many games each team won.

In this imaginary series the Red Sox scored 36 runs while the Mets scored only 13, yet everyone would acknowledge that the Mets won the series. Not a single sports fan would be running around demanding that we count the total number of runs instead, or insisting that the way we determine the World Series winner is sinister.

But I think this is the correct analogy with the electoral college. How many games — e.g., how many political societies, albeit weighted to some degree by population — did you win?

Also, the electoral college puts an upper bound on how much support you can earn from any one state. Even if your whole campaign is geared toward taxing the rest of the country and handing the money to California, you still can’t get more than 55 electoral votes from that state. So to some extent, the electoral college forces the candidate to run a national race more than would be necessary otherwise.

A group called National Popular Vote, which seeks to abolish the electoral college, claims that "presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion."

But this problem becomes much worse without the electoral college. If there is no limit to the support I can get from California and New York, then I'll campaign in those states like a madman. At least the electoral college puts something of a brake on this kind of strategy.

A brief note about Trump's defeat in the popular vote: had the election been decided on the basis of the popular vote, Trump would have campaigned differently in the first place. Also, more people in, say, California would have bothered to vote for him. So we can’t know that he would have lost the popular vote had those been the rules.

What we do know is that every step toward making the U.S. into a giant blob instead of a decentralized collection of societies is a step toward more centralized, bureaucratic management of society, and away from liberty.

South Korea's foreign minister has said she believes President Donald Trump is largely responsible for bringing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table.
​Kim will become the first North Korean leader to cross the Military Demarcation Line between North and South Korea on Friday for talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. President Trump is expected to meet with Kim in May or June.

Hopefully someone in the state department will give Trump cue cards to read from so he doesn’t mess this up. Here’s a few talking points to start from:

We aren’t quite sure that you’re serious about denuclearization, but we want to believe you.

If you denuclearize, we’ll lift all sanctions and freely trade with your people. We’ll provide a market to bring you technology, medicine, nutrition and quality of life.

We want you and South Korea to reconcile your relationship peacefully without U.S. intervention. We want to facilitate peace, but let’s be clear, it’s peace between you and South Korea. Success or failure is yours alone.

Lifting sanctions and opening up North Korea to the world would increase the quality of life of every North Korean citizen and the history books will attribute it to you (Kim Jong Un). Make no mistake, you will go down as a humanitarian hero, a man whose leadership changed the trajectory of a country and changed the livelihoods of millions of citizens.

The United States will leave the Korean Peninsula once peace returns.

Again, we don't really believe you, but we want to believe you because your citizens deserve humanity:

Voter ID laws should not be controversial. A few points:
​
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to drive.
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to fly.
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to ride a train.
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to enter this country and almost any other.
--In many venues, you must even have a government-issued ID in order to buy alcohol, buy tobacco, and be admitted to bars and clubs.

Voting is an even greater responsibility than any of those. Why, then, is it so controversial to require a government-issued ID in order for a person to vote in government elections? Voter fraud isn't a significant problem in this country, but it also isn't non-existent--and any fraud is too much fraud. Requiring voters to present a valid form of identification is one of the easiest, cheapest ways to eliminate one avenue of engaging in fraud.

Many argue that it discriminates against Hispanics and other demographics that are less likely to have government-issued ID's. In my mind, there are two responses to this.

First, all laws affect demographic groups differently. There is no such thing as a law that affects everyone in precisely the same manner. This isn't by itself a reason not to enact a law. If it were, then we could have no laws at all. (For example, even speed limit laws disproportionately impact demographics with higher rates of automobile ownership. Federal minimum wage laws disproportionately impact states with more low-wage earners. And so on.)

Fundamentally, however, there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of anyone in any demographic of getting a government-issued ID. We commonly associate ID's with driver's licenses, but that's a misconception. It is definitely true that not everyone can get a driver's license, but not everyone needs one. States also issue plain ID's.

That brings me to my second point: cost. If state ID's cost $15,000, then there may be validity to the discrimination argument. They don't though. In some states, ID's are completely free, and in most others, they cost no more than $10. If you're a citizen, then you can get one of these ID's at little or no cost. Thus, the only people who truly are locked out of voting by ID laws are people who are not U.S. citizens, and it's illegal for them to vote anyway.

Many counter this by saying, "True, but low-income and less educated demographics frequently do not know how to get these free ID's."

​Come on, folks: Individual responsibility is an important value in this country. If you don't know how to do something that you need to know how to do, then you must take some initiative and figure that something out. Acquiring a state ID is simple, and figuring out how to do it doesn't even require an Internet connection.

Guns have only two enemies; Rust and Liberals. Liberal Tears Gun Oil protects against both. We have bottled Liberal Tears to create a CLP that gives you guaranteed 2nd Amendment protection. New Liberal Tears Gun Oil is NOW BACON SCENTED

Here's an idea though. Every election cycle, liberal and conservative activists engage in an implicit competition with each other by shoving as many voter registration forms into the hands their favored demographics. They've figured out how to quickly and simply explain to people how to register to vote and then how to actually vote--both of which are more complicated than getting a state ID. Why don't these groups simply hand out one additional form at the same time: a form explaining how to get an ID. This isn't rocket science. You don't even have to know how to sign your own name in order to get a state ID.

This brings us to the real reason many of these activist groups oppose voter ID laws: politics. Having to hand out an additional form and then have people engage in one additional step before voting would have an impact on the number of people they could smash into the polls after telling them who they should vote for. This, my friends, isn't a good reason for opposing a very basic, common-sense measure that would add just a bit more integrity to an electoral system already under assault by Russia and by dishonest allegations of "millions of fraudulent votes" by one of the very highest officials in our government.

Because it no longer requires a certain form of ID, some are opposing it on the grounds that there are consequences for lying on one's affidavit. Seriously?

Of course there are consequences for lying--again, common sense. Why wouldn't there be? What would be the point of having people sign a document at all if there were no consequences of lying on the document? That would simply waste taxpayer money to print the affidavits in the first place.

Any system in which anyone can walk in off the street to take part in the most critical function of our system on the basis of nothing more than his own word is a system that can never be of complete integrity. Much as we may hate to admit it, some people's word is worth less than a little.

Our system should be as watertight as possible, and that starts with a very basic, cheap (even free) requirement already in force for so much else in our society: showing a form of ID.​​

As I write this fat check to Uncle Sam, I've always wondered... What if elections were held immediately after we paid our tax bill every year?

What if taxes weren't withheld from everyone's paychecks every year and they had to come up with thousands each April?

What if my tax bill was itemized every year? Rapper Cardi B famously noted that when she gives millions to private charities, she gets emails showing the schools she's helping to build and the kids she's assisting, why doesn't Uncle Sam?

What if your tax bills were itemized? Of the XXX you owe:

$251 goes to Egypt for foreign aid
$14 goes for treadmills for shrimp
$149 goes to govermental printing costs that could be avoided by changing font
$110 goes to Air Force One for unofficial vacations
$.48 on an unused monkey house
$29 fraudulent tax reimbursements to prisoners
$410 on 'improper payments' or fraudulent payments due to lack of financial controls
$1.89 on a 3-week long FAA party
$42 NSA and other gov't use of World of Warcraft as collections platform
$4 U.S. Census commercial that appeared during the Super Bowl
$.22 On a laundry-folding robot
$17 On a study about baby names (and "The astounding conclusion: Popular names are popular with parents.")

Do you think people would be more active in holding politicians/bureaucracy accountable?Who cares more about your money? You or the Government? Of course it's you. Looking at the list above, would you better invest that money in your life or are you glad it went to countries where they openly burn our flag?
​50 Examples of Government Waste
​

The six categories of wasteful and unnecessary spending are:
1.Programs that should be devolved to state and local governments;
2.Programs that could be better performed by the private sector;
3.Mistargeted programs whose recipients should not be entitled to government benefits;
4.Outdated and unnecessary programs;
5.Duplicative programs; and
6.Inefficiency, mismanagement, and fraud.The first four categories are generally subjective, and reasonable people can disagree on whether a given federal program falls under their purview. Yet the final two categories -- duplication and inefficiency, mismanagement, and fraud -- are comparatively easy to identify and oppose.

Since you made it this far down the post, I'll let you in on a little secret. This 4th of July, we're going live with a new website www.Liberty.wiki. We're building out the infrastructure at the moment and learning wiki markup from scratch! Please bookmark it and, once up and running, contribute of your own free will, with an article or two on something that you're an expert at!
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​

The question Ted Cruz just asked Mark Zuckerberg is the one question I want to know the answer to....

Does Zuckerberg know, or care about, the political leanings "of the 15-20,000 Facebook employees dedicated to content review"?

Because the thing is, that skew matters.

I have no doubt that Zuckerberg and Facebook don't ask people what their political views are in the hiring process. That's not normally how hiring works. When I applied to work at the CATO Institute i had zero questions about my political leanings. Zero.

But that's not necessary for bias to emerge.

What actually happens is that people self-select into particular industries and companies for a host of reasons, the corporate values and tone of the working environment weeds out a lot, hiring managers tend to hire people generally like themselves so even if they don't ask any particular questions, they're looking for people they can work with so obviously finding points of agreement around interests and values help people get jobs in the first place.
​And Facebook is located in the Bay Area in California, which has its own skew.

The problem, though, is that if 18,000 of their 20,000 content reviewers all lean a certain way, then the content they flag and the content they review will too.

And that means they're putting more scrutiny on (in this case) conservatives, libertarians, or just non-leftist types, and flagging more right-leaning posts as inappropriate, banning more of those pages.

I see this already in terms of the fact checking system Facebook has implemented.

And the irony of this is that if Facebook does more of the same, the result will be even MORE polarization, which is the very thing they claim they want to prevent.

I'm fine with Mark Zuckerberg ONLY hiring militant leftists, if that's what he wants to do.

I just want there to betransparency. Don't said that you're unbiased, if you're not. Be clear that Facebook is what it is- a great platform that has a bias and if you don't align with that bias, you can get kicked from the platform with no recourse.

Zuckerberg said that he believed for the first 10-12 years of running Facebook that their role as a company was to build tools for people to use to connect with each other.

Now he believes the company should have a new mission: To police the user-base and make sure those tools are being used "for good".

Little does he know, he's headed down an authoritarian path. Did he not take Dystopian Lit at Harvard?

What are your thoughts on how this can turn? Are you already off Facebook completely?